Actually, Alf is more likely to want to cling to life if a spunky female medic gives the mouth-to-mouth.

It won’t be too long before the Grumbles will have to give England a miss in their travel plans.

This will be highly disappointing for them, because while they don’t much admire your basic Pom they do admire the Royals. And England is where the Royals (the ones who matter) happen to live.

But age is catching up on the Grumbles and soon it looks like they might find themselves on a one-way ticket if they visited the land of Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and what-have-you and went down with a tummy bug or some-such.

St Peter will be asked to take note that Alf’s arrival is somewhat premature but his cultural care in a Hawke’s Bay hospital was top-class.

Alf read with some bemusement a newspaper report that “Maori representation of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board’s (DHB) workforce continues to increase…”

This seems to be a roundabout way of saying the board is lifting its quota of Maori staff.

The figures certainly are there to show this is so:

At the end of January, 12 per cent of the workforce described themselves as Maori, up from 11 per cent for January 2014, a report states. The DHB, Hawke’s Bay’s largest employer, aims to help increase its engagement with Maori through a more representative workforce – Maori comprise 25 per cent of the region’s population – as well as staff training.

Alf would like to think the board aims to help increase its engagement with all people.

Alf has forgotten when he first learned it is imprudent to chop off your nose to spite your face. It has always struck him as being very good advice.

The expression is used to describe a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem – it’s a warning against acting out of pique, or against pursuing revenge in a way that would damage oneself more than the object of one’s anger

A bit of research by dipping into Wikipedia shows the phrase may be associated with the numerous legends of pious women disfiguring themselves in order to protect their virginity.

Wikipedia gives the example of Æbbe the Younger, the Mother Superior of the monastery of Coldingham. In 867 AD, Viking pirates from Zealand and Uppsala landed in Scotland.